Adventures of a tiny Squirrel and her friends...

This is our life.

Thursday, 22 March 2012

Autumn in Spring

Yesterday was the anniversary of Autumn's homecoming from BC Children's Hospital. It's been a crazy fast year, as everyone warned me it would be...But I still remember that tiny wrinkly little squirrel with her NG tube and a zillion other wires sticking out of her sleeper. She was so tiny and soft and we were dying to get her out of that gerbil cage and into our home where she belonged. Those were 17 extremely long days...17 days of intense mama-training with the very-knowledgeable NICU nurses, for which I am still grateful...17 days of commutes to visit our girl...17 days of worrying...17 days of thinking we'd never get out of there...And here we are a year later, 20 lbs heavier, a billion photographs richer, much taller and with endless memories in the bank. An amazing year it has been.
Autumn has again demonstrated her resilience and has fought her way through hand foot and mouth disease...It sounds terrible and it is...But not as disgusting as the name suggests. I hate to see my baby sick, but the cuddles are pretty great--Not gonna lie! Anyway, it started off with a pretty severe case of the crankies and then turned into a fever that hovered around 39 for a night and the majority of the following day. After the fever subsided, spots turned up around her mouth and on her lips, around her ankles and wrists. She also had a couple of spots on her fingers. The spots became blisters and quickly disappeared. The whole virus from start to finish lasted approximately a week but I'm told that it will live in her poop for about a month. Yuck. Apparently, hand foot and mouth disease is the new chicken pox...Kids are now immunized for chicken pox and so this is the new childhood right of passage virus. So keep your eyes peeled for these symptoms if your baby is under the weather. Fun! Autumn has her 12 month shots on April 11th and I have been weighing the odds of omitting the chicken pox vaccine from the roster of immunizations that she will receive. I just don't feel that it's necessary though the public health nurse that I most recently discussed this with, seriously disagrees with me. SERIOUSLY!
Things have been pretty sickly around our place for the last few weeks--Autumn's virus kicked things off and her Daddy has been fighting something pretty yucky for the last 10 days or so as well. It's true that once your baby is big enough to play with other babies, they bring home all kinds of fun germs. I'm actually in the process of checking out some natural recipes for sanitizers using things like castille soap, baking soda, borax and vinegar. Teddy is anti-bleach and we try to be environmentally friendly in our home. I'll post some reviews once I test out a few different things.
Hope everyone is enjoying Spring so far! We are having a nice sunny day here in Vancouver...Though it's only 2degrees...Our family and pals out East are enjoying some seriously enviable weather. We're pretty jealous in these parts. :)